I think the battles qualify to be considered a "Draw" but in terms of an overall valuation of the campaign, its obviously a failure......None of the battles were deceisive as Hattin, and their beach strongholds were lost after Memelukes consolidated power in Egypt.

Incidentally there has as of late in accademic circles been some discussion over the military significance of Hattin and Saladins 1187-89 campaigns. Some begin to view it more critically, calling into question its decisive nature. Nothing has been produced yet though, mainly talk and discussion. I'd be interested to see that argument when it comes out eventually.

The matter with the Mamluks is that they created a military giant, ever greater than their Ayyubid predecessors, and so when that fell on the Franks it was a very different game altogether. That said, it took a good 30 years of methodical sieges and military actions to get the job done, a credit to the nature of the fortifications.

Incidentally it seems like the tendency of the revisionism of such "academic circles" is just to systematically diminish the relevance of any Crusader defeat and to maximize the relevance of any Crusader victory.

Sounds like little more than pure rationalizing chauvinism, if you ask me.
Hardly anything new under the Sun, if you ask me again.

Like a mere justification for the free pass deliberately given by Popes and even just secular monarchs for the fanatic plundering, decimation and even slaughtering of myriad populations and states chosen just for being Muslim, Jewish, "Pagans" Eastern Christians (!!!), alternative Western Christians (heretics) or plainly just political enemies of the Pope in turn.

The closest equivalent of this spirit one may find nowadays (even if in exponentially lesser proportions) would be the modern Jihaidism that no doubt the bulk of those same pious authors would immediately condemn.

Im not sure if its Chauvinism to be honest, rather than just a discussion of overlooked military events and realities. Hattin draws a lot of attention, but what happens after (other than Jerusalem in 1187) tends to get missed or glossed over. There isnt really a victory to play up for the Franks, that their army was destroyed is undeniable, but they ask the questions, does Saladin get too free a ride on Hattin, what does the destruction of its arm actually mean for the Franks and their kingdom?

It's simply unmistakable; blindly & most uncritically accepting the epic account of never-ending victories for two centuries systematically against purportedly immense numbers of fundamentally anonymous enemies and victims in spite of the objective undeniable but unexplained failure to advance and the eventual loss of absolutely any conquered territory.

It's simply unmistakable; blindly & most uncritically accepting the epic account of never-ending victories for two centuries systematically against purportedly immense numbers of fundamentally anonymous enemies and victims in spite of the objective undeniable but unexplained failure to advance and the eventual loss of absolutely any conquered territory.

- Third Crusade; in spite of some victories the Crusaders are stopped at Ascalon and failed to take Jerusalem.

- Emperor's Crusade of 1197: failure.

- Fourth Crusade:
-- Victory against the Catholic Zara.
-- Extremely brilliant victory and Fall of Constantinople.
-- Creation of the so-called Latin Empire and related states
-- The expedition failed to even reach Holy Land

Hope that from the list within my last post the objective answer to the OP might become evident.

For the record please note the two captures of Lisbon by Crusaders in transit to Holy Land mentioned in my last post; together with the aforementioned limited contribution to the campaign of Navas de Tolosa they were AFAIK the only relevant contribution of pan-European military expeditions convoked by the Papacy to the centuries-long Reconquista.

The other "pluralist" and / or "generalist" Crusades are simply a too heterogeneous group of conflicts with rather poorly defined and even contradictory inclusion criteria; regarding the OP, their success varied from the total genocidal success of the Albigensian "Crusade" to the disastrous fiasco of the Spanish Armada "Crusade" against England in 1588..

- War of the Lombards: the Imperialist Crusaders defeated by the local Crusaders of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Failure by any standard)

Quote:

- 1265-1271 failure in the defense and fall of most residual Crusader coastal fortifications against Baybars I

Not actually crusades or actions by crusaders. These were actions by the Franks of the Latin East for their own regional military/political needs, not because they were crusaders or on a crusade. They hadn't taken any vows, not taken the cross, were receiving no benefits of crusading indulgences in either spiritual or legal terms. They did it because they lived there, it was their home, their realm, their existence. They may have lived in what we term the Crusader States and been part of or present at what we call The Crusades, but this would be modern appellations, anachronistic and alien to the time itself. One should not confuse the action of the Franks of the Latin East for the actions of crusaders, they are not the same thing.

Quote:

- The disastrous so-called Children's Crusade (nuff' said)

This is popularist not Traditionalist.

Quote:

Hope that from the list within my last post the objective answer to the OP might become evident.

Not actually crusades or actions by crusaders. These were actions by the Franks of the Latin East for their own regional military/political needs, not because they were crusaders or on a crusade. They hadn't taken any vows, not taken the cross, were receiving no benefits of crusading indulgences in either spiritual or legal terms. They did it because they lived there, it was their home, their realm, their existence. They may have lived in what we term the Crusader States and been part of or present at what we call The Crusades, but this would be modern appellations, anachronistic and alien to the time itself. One should not confuse the action of the Franks of the Latin East for the actions of crusaders, they are not the same thing.

This is popularist not Traditionalist.

As for the rest, very evident.

Excellent observations.

The military actions of the Crusaderr states were still covered by the traditionalist criteria.

The knight orders were systematically a significant portion of the armies of the Crusader states; they had certainly systematically taken the vow & the cross.

In the War of the Lombards, the Imperialist (defeated) side were fundamentally recently arrived Crusaders of Frederik II from northern Italy (hence the name)

The Children's Crusade, naively fanatically idealistic as it may have been, was still strictly speaking a military expedition addressed to conquer Holy Land; those are traditionalist, not popularist criteria.

Im afriad I dont recall any specific action at Ascalon during the Third Crusade, during the Barons Crusade 1239-41 yes, but not the Third. As I recall Ascalon was successfully captured and repaired and then handed over as part of the negotiations of the Treaty of Jaffa.

Jerusalem remained in Muslim hands, but access for pilgrims to visit and worship was secured. As for the rich lands, well perhaps to an extent, though Im not so sure on how financially damaging being restrained to the coast was, if anything it became a much simpler matter, easier to defend and the 13th Century grew to be a considerably wealthy realm, more so than perhaps it had in the 12th.

The capture of Cyprus offered new possibilities, providing an ofshore bastion, one that would long outlast the mainland states.

Saladin despite early victories failed in his task of removing the Latin Presence from the region, and faced his own political and financial issues with his own men beginning to desert him.

Both sides failed in achieveing their objectives, both fough eachother to a standstill, neither could critically defeat the other, negotiation and treaty were the only way out.

The Third Crusade seems very much a draw.

I'm afraid you are absolutely right, my bad I pretended to mean the battle of Jaffa.

Even if regularly portrayed as another brilliant victory of the English king, it was clearly tactically a stalemate at best, strategically a Crusader defeat.

Let just say that had the Third Crusade been an unpolluted never-ending series of Crusader victories, Jerusalem would have been theirs; period.

The OP is about the Crusade's victor; access for pilgrims to visit and worship was not the goal (not to mention that it seems it was possible even before the Crusade).
Jerusalem was the goal, and it remained in Muslim hands; the city was not even attacked by this Crusade.
No pious rationalization could disguise the evident historical fact that the Crusade of the two Kings and one Emperor (not just of Richard) had been a definitive military failure.

That's exactly why the Papacy ought to call for another Crusade just six years after the quite objectively useless Kings' Crusade.

The treacherous and useless capture of Cyprus just offered the incredibly unintelligent strategical blunder of inevitably siding the still powerful and very Christian Roman Empire with the Ayyubids & co, no doubt one of the main contributors for the definitive failure of this poorly conceived Crusade.